Nylon is a designation for a family of synthetic polymers known as aliphatic polyamides, and is one of the most commonly used polymers. The chemical constituents of nylon include carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen. Nylons may include condensation copolymers, such as nylon 6,6, that may be formed by reacting a diamine and a dicarboxylic acid so that amides are formed at both ends of each monomer. Alternatively, type of nylons, such as nylon 6, may be made by a ring-opening polymerization of cyclic amides (lactams).
Types of nylons are distinguished by a numerical suffix that specifies the numbers of carbons donated by the monomers. For example, for nylons with a two-number designation, such as nylon 6,6 or nylon 6,12, the first number represents the number of carbons from the diamine monomer, and the second number represents the number of carbons from the diacid monomer. For nylons having a single number designation, such as nylon 4 or nylon 6, the number represents the number of carbon atoms in the repeating monomer units.
The 6 carbon commodity chemical caprolactam has global production on the order of 2 million metric tons per year. A major use of this commodity chemical is as a monomer in the manufacture of nylon 6. Current industrial processes for the manufacture of caprolactam use petrochemically derived benzene as the raw material. Efforts are being made to replace this petrochemically derived raw material with alternative raw materials, such as those that may be derived from biomass. Replacing current petrochemically derived caprolactam with biomass derived compounds may contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. There remains a need to provide alternative scalable approaches for commercial production of nylon 6 from alternative raw materials.